A cure for HIV

Is this the answer for so many millions of people suffering from HIV/AIDS? Is this possibly the greatest discovery in our generation? Read this article below from the Huffington Post

On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journalBlood affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

Brown's case paves a path for constructing a permanent cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells.

Last week, Time named another AIDS-related discovery to its list of the Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2010. Recent studies show that healthy individuals who take antiretrovirals, medicine commonly prescribed for treating HIV, can reduce their risk of contracting the disease by up to 73 percent.

While these developments by no means prove a cure for the virus has been found, they can certainly provide hope for the more than 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. Alongside such findings, global efforts to combat the epidemic have accelerated as of late, with new initiatives emerging in the Philippines and South Africa this week.

Emmanuel Jal wants Peace

One of the criticism regarding the genocide in Rwanda is that the people in the west didn't know about it in time to do anything. Another statement made after the 1994 genocide was "never again". Unfortunately it is happening again not too far away in the Darfur region of Sudan. Although Darfur has been in the media in the last few years, it isn't gaining the awareness it deserves and the result is history repeating itself.

Emmanuel Jal has just released a music video with support from celebrities such as Alicia Keys and George Clooney and cultural heavyweights like Kofi Annan and Richard Branson to create more awareness for this suffering region in Sudan.

It's time for you to know. If you want to learn more, check out http://www.we-want-peace.com/

200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes

Check out this video that explains how 200 countries have evolved over the last 200 years regarding health as well as wealth. It a very interesting summary of the history of the world over this time frame.

Invest in Education, One Loan at a Time

This is an excerpt from Beyond Profit Magazine's October issue.

We are all well acquainted with microfinance 1.0, its successes and failures. What will microfinance 2.0 look like? Probably a lot like VIttana, a new platform that is taking microfinance to the next level, dispersing student loans in the developing world.

While microfinance has done much to help its borrowers build businesses, give their children new opportunities, their children are now growing up, finishing high school, and thinking about college. The problem: student loans just aren't available in the developing world. Why? A loan to a college student bears no immediate promise of repayment. Vitanna hopes to demonstrate that students are as good a risk as any other microfinance borrower.

It's no wonder that the Huffington Post named Vittana number one of their top 10 "game changers" in philanthropy!

Vittana's website is at www.vitanna.org, and this is how it works: When you make a loan to a Vittana student, 100% of your funds go to the student. Using your loan, the student finishes college (or vocational school), gets a degree and then gets a job. When the student repays Vittana, Vittana repays you the full amount of your loan — if you lent $25, you are repaid $25.

This is a great model of microfinance thinking about whats next in a newly educated person. There are great websites such as Kiva that assist entrepreneurs with loans so they can change their lives by becoming financially independent and sustainable. But Vitanna is the next step in the development of these newly sustainable families.